The article ”The Peak and Decline of World Oil and Gas Production” was published as long ago as 2003 in the scientific journal Minerals and Energy – Raw Materials Report by Kjell Aleklett and Colin C. Campbell (Volume 18, Number 1, 2003 , pp. 5-20[16].) It was the first “peer reviewed” article to discuss Peak Oil.

That article was read in 2007 by representatives of the “Global Transport Forum” of the OECD and they gave me the task of writing the report, ”Peak Oil and the Evolving Strategies of Oil Importing and Exporting Countries”. This report was one of those discussed at a round table meeting that was held in the IEA’s conference room in Paris. At that opportunity, in November 2007, I had a number of private conversations with officers of the IEA. The revelations now reported in the Guardian were revealed to me then under the promise that I not name the source. I had earlier heard the same thing from another officer from Norway who, at the time he spoke of the pressure being applied by the USA, was working for the IEA. Since these anecdotes were not scientific evidence I never made use of the information other than as inspiration to continue our own research.

Earlier, following a suggestion by Colin Campbell, I had communicated to Sweden’s delegate at the IEA that Sweden should leave the IEA since it was deceiving the world and this would have serious consequences globally. I also asked how they could approve of something like the World Energy Outlook that was so in error. I had previously posted an analysis of World Outlook 2004 on ASPO’s homepage. In the discussion that followed it was revealed that the USA was applying pressure. The pressure was that the IEA should consider the prognoses that USA’s Energy Information Agency releases half a year earlier as guidelines for the IEA report. In connection with this I can mention that, in 2003, we received financial support from [Sweden’s] Energy Authority to begin the research that has now resulted in our publication “Peak of the Oil Age” and that Sweden’s Energy Authority also financed the first Peak Oil conference (ASPO) that we held in Uppsala in 2002.

After meeting with the Swedish delegate I have, at various times, communicated my view that Guy Caruso (who was then responsible for the EIA and its prognoses) was one of the world’s most dangerous people. Today a great deal of the responsibility for this situation rests with him. I have also asserted that I did not think that the level of competence within the IEA could be so low that all of its officers believed in what they have been presenting. What these faulty analyses will cost the world in the future is difficult to estimate but all the crisis packages that are currently in place are presumably a smaller part of that cost. In our publication ”How reasonable are oil production scenarios from public agencies?” we have shown that the IEA’s future prognoses are erroneous.

One consequence of that which has now been revealed is that the emissions scenarios that the IPCC has advanced for calculating future carbon dioxide production from oil can never reflect reality. Before the round table conference in Paris I was also given the task by the OECD of writing another report, ”Reserve driven forecasts for oil, gas and coal and limits in carbon dioxide emissions”. In connection with the Global Transport Forum in Leipzig in 2008 I met the chairperson for the IPCC, Rajendra Kumar Pachauri, and gave him a copy of this report. The subsequent interest from the IPCC’s side can be described as absolutely zero.

It is time for President Obama to establish a commission to undertake a detailed investigation of the EIA’s activities and establish the truth. It is extremely important that the members of this commission have no associations with the oil industry.

We have been discussing this issue at the FT’s Energy Source blog, and as I said over there, I am genuinely baffled by this story. The question, as always, is cui bono? How does it benefit the US, a large and growing net importer of oil, to misrepresent the state of oil resources? I can see why the Saudis or other exporters might do that, which makes suspicion of their data superficially plausible, at least. But if the US deludes itself and the world, it damages its own interests.

Oil: future world shortages are being drastically underplayed, say experts

• Swedish academics slate IEA’s report as ‘political document’ for countries with vested interest in low prices
• Oil production ‘likely to be 75m barrels a day rather than 105m’

A leading academic institute has urged European governments to review global oil supplies for themselves because of the “politicisation” of the International Energy Agency’s figures.

Uppsala University in Sweden today published a scathing assessment of the IEA’s annual World Energy Outlook, saying some assumptions drastically underplayed the scale of future oil shortages.

Kjell Aleklett, professor of physics at Uppsala and co-author of a new report “The Peak of the Oil Age”, claims oil production is more likely to be 75m barrels a day by 2030 than the “unrealistic” 105m used by the IEA in its recently published World Energy Outlook 2009. The academic, who runs a Global Energy unit at Uppsala, described the IEA’s report as a “political document” developed for consuming countries with a vested interest in low prices.